Quote Center: No. 24/23 St. John's Postgame vs. DePaul

St. John’s Head Coach Chris Mullin

On Shamorie Ponds injury…

“Day to day with a lower back strain.”

On finding out Ponds would be out…

“I found out today. Obviously he is a great player, so without him, we approach things a little differently. Anytime you take your best player off the team, it has an effect. We came out and we played okay. A little passive, I thought, but overall, in the second half, we picked up our energy. We just need to play through.”

On role adjustments…

“A lot of times when you run a play that breaks down, it really gets down to being aggressive and driving the ball. I thought we did a good job of that. It doesn’t show in the stats sheet, but we were driving the ball, trying to make plays and it just didn’t work out tonight.”

On team’s execution…

“I think we played the post, the last seven to eight minutes, pretty well. You need to hold your ground. They can’t back you down to the basket. You hold your ground. [Femi Olujobi] had some size on him. Sedee [Keita] could handle him. … You just need to hold your ground. That’s part of any competition. I thought we did a little better job of that. I think too much easy positions and then I believe, with 15 minutes left in the game, the fouls took a little aggression away. To me, you need to carve out your space, hold your ground and deal with the ramifications whatever that may be. We will do a much better job from here on out of doing just that, and if that’s illegal, so be it. You can read a stat sheet. You can digest that.”

On taking the blame for tonight’s loss…

“Totally on me. 100 percent. Everything that happens is on me. I got it but I am not embarrassed. I’ll be back here, take a day off and then be back.”

On bouncing back after the team’s first back-to-back losses of the season…

“I feel bad about this loss and I am going to prepare for the next game. I don’t really care about what happened two days ago. We will move past this, no question. We always do.”

On being outrebounded…

“We are really concerned about defensive rebounding and we gave up 14 offensive rebounds. A big focus is transition defense. When you crash the offensive boards, you have bad transition defense. If you play small, you want to get back on defense, not crash the boards. San Antonio [Spurs] probably has the best transition defense in the world. They do not crash the offensive boards. So yes, we like to get back on defense and not give up transition baskets. When my guys are open, they are free to shoot open shots and then get back on defense, not crash the boards and have a bad defensive transition possession. That’s our policy. Thank you for the question.”

On if the team was mentally prepared to play without Shamorie Ponds…

“I actually think they were looking forward to it. Going out there and just winning a ball game. We have dealt with that before. It is a part of the game. Guys get hurt and you have to move on. It just didn’t happen tonight.”

Senior forward Marvin Clark II

On playing without Shamorie Ponds…

“We knew all along that he was not going to be playing. Of course it changes some things, but we have a pretty talented team, so it really doesn’t change too much. I shot 6 of 16 tonight. We didn’t get a lot of things to go in from beyond the arc. That’s the result.”

On team approach without Shamorie Ponds…

“No, we were ready to play. We felt good going into the game. We felt good with our game plan. We gave them too many extra positions and you can’t win games that way.”

On bouncing back against Creighton…

“I’m very confident. This is just a bump in the road. We have a lot of guys that can handle adversity, especially us two [alongside Justin Simon] up here. We’ve been through a losing streak, so we know what adversity is. We are confident in our abilities and we will be prepared and ready for the next game. We just need to go into our locker room, talk to our guys and get ready for these next couple of days of preparation.”

Redshirt Junior Guard Justin Simon

On handling the ball and running the offense…

“Tonight, I think Shamorie [Ponds] being out, offensively, didn’t hurt as much. He is a great scorer, I just think it was all on the defensive end tonight.”

On the size differential faced tonight…

“I thought our post defense was not good tonight, they got whatever looks they wanted down there and they also got offensive rebounds. We just didn’t box out, didn’t rebound and they punched us in the post.”